Nine Southern African Cities from the Namib Coast to the Copperbelt

Walvis Bay is the only natural deep-water harbor on Namibia's coast, protected by the Pelican Point sand spit. Its plankton-rich waters drew whales and the fishing vessels that followed them, and for much of its history the bay was governed as an exclave separate from the rest of what is now Namibia.

Kimberley grew from the diamond fields, where Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato made their fortunes and Rhodes founded the De Beers company. It built Africa's first stock exchange in 1881 and, in 1882, became the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to light its streets electrically.

Bulawayo began around 1840 as the kraal of the Ndebele king Mzilikazi, and his son Lobengula ruled from it until British South Africa Company soldiers captured it in 1893. It later became Zimbabwe's principal industrial center and the hub of the national rail network.

Francistown took its name from the English prospector Daniel Francis and grew from an 1897 settlement near the Monarch gold mine. It became the center of southern Africa's first gold rush and is now Botswana's second-largest city, with 103,417 people at the 2022 census.

Maun began in 1915 as the tribal capital of the Batawana people on the Thamalakane River. Today it is the administrative center of Ngamiland and the gateway for safari and air-charter trips into the Okavango Delta, with about 85,293 residents in 2022.

Polokwane was founded by Voortrekkers in 1886 as Pietersburg and was renamed on 25 February 2005, the new name meaning sanctuary in Northern Sotho. It became the capital of Limpopo Province in 1994 and hosted matches in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Mbombela, formerly Nelspruit, was founded in 1895 by three brothers of the Nel family and grew as a stopover on the railway linking the Witwatersrand goldfields to Delagoa Bay. It was renamed in October 2009 and is the capital of Mpumalanga province.

Beira is where the Pungwe River meets the Indian Ocean, and its port serves central Mozambique as well as landlocked Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. The Portuguese Mozambique Company developed it in the 19th century, and Cyclone Idai destroyed up to 90 percent of the city in March 2019.

Ndola was founded in 1904 by John Edward Stephenson and became the industrial and commercial center of the Copperbelt, Zambia's copper-mining region. It lies about 10 kilometers from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and had 627,503 residents at the 2022 census.